Download pdf - Bihar Anjuman

The role of Social networkingsites in Communal harmonyShahzad Alam Barni (RTI Activist, Aligarh)India is the second largest country of the world in relation to itspopulation and 7th largest country in relation to its area. Socialnetworking sites like Facebook, Orkut, twitter, hi5 etc. have a largenumber of users.According to a news published in Hindustan Times dated February 2,2012, with 43,497,980 users, India has the world's second highestn u m b e r o fF a c e b o o k u s e r snow. It is more thanthe population ofArgentina, Kenya,Canada and almosttwice the Australia'spopulation. In aweek, India hasadded 5,452,980more users to beatI n d o n e s i a(43,057,320) to thesecond place.USA leads the number of FB users with more than 152.5 million users,according to the website checkfacebook.com, a comprehensiveanalytics platform for Facebook. While an overwhelming 72.8% ofIndian FB users are male, more than 48% of users are from the 18-24years age group and more than 27% from the 25-34 age groups.Interestingly, more women use FB in the US (55%) than men (45%)while 24% users are in the 18-24 categories with 23% from the 25-34 agegroups.India has faced a number of communal riots since the very first year ofindependence of India in 1947, when a communal riot in Bengal tookplace in which more than 2,000 people had died and more than 3,000were injured. After that incident of violence there has been a series ofcommunal violence that destroyed the harmony and brotherhood -these include the riots of Moradabad, Meerut, Aligarh, Bhagalpur, andthe masscre of Gujarat apart from many others.There are a number of pages and groups of different interests onFacebook to promote the things through this social networking site.Social media, especially Facebook, have become one of the mostpowerful tools for the promotion of anything at a large level.Hundreds march inJamia Nagar againstillegal arrestingNew Delhi, 26 Feb: Hundreds of peoplesdemonstrated today in Jamia Nagar against illegalarresting, kidnapping and harassing of localresidents by the police.Association for Protection of Civil Rights (APCR)Delhi secretary, Syed Akhlaq while addressing to theprotest-march said, “Police is for people’s safety notfor terrorizing them and it is their prime duty torespect civil rights while arresting or nabbing anyperson and Supreme Court should take action if itsgiven guidelines are not being followed by any lawenforcement agency.” He added, “People shouldaware and come out to protect their civil rights.”Adv. Feroz Gazi vice president of APCR, Delhi chaptersaid, “No one is allowed to take law into his handeither police or common people and every personhas right to protect himself from illegal detention.”Engineer Saleem, Jamaat-e-Islami Hind PublicRelation secretary said, “APCR has taken right stepon right time to aware people about their civil rights.”About 200 persons including advocates, socialactivists and students marched through Okhla PoliceStation, Jamia Millia Islamia University, Zakir Nagarto Batla House.This march was a part of APCR’s week-long civilrights awareness campaignAkhlak AhmadAssociation for Protection of Civil Rights(APCR)New Delhi-25, Phone # 011-64639388Mob # 9899384358According to a study done on face book regarding communal harmonyand the contribution of social media (with especial reference to theFacebook) has revealed that there are only a few groups and pages thatare related to promote the communal harmony among people. As far asthe pages are concerned, there are only 14 pages of Religious Unity with15,980 likes, 8 pages of Unity in India with 255 likes, only 4 pages ofrespect to all religions with 163 likes and 6 pages of similarities betweentwo or more religions with 168 likes. As far as the groups are concernedthere are 18 groups of religious Unity with 5,392 members, 7 groups ofUnity in India with 274 members, 6 groups of similarities betweenreligions with 421 members.The total number of likes and members of all these pages and groups is22,653 out of the total of 43.5 million users, while at the same time, youwill find 5,579,630 likes of the page named Sachin Tendulkar.10